


Catalysts

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Patrician & Clerk [3]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Book: The Truth, Complicated Relationships, During Canon, Emotionally Repressed, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Loyalty, M/M, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:05:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17650754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Some excerpts from the events ofThe Truth.Vimes is probably right about the path of least resistance.





	Catalysts

Drumknott only muzzily recalls being brought into the watch-house’s forensic unit. He had been unconscious, for a little while, and he had come to as he’d been brought into the watch-house: he remembers being confused, angry, and more than a little violent. He hadn’t been able to move his right arm very well, but he vaguely recalls having hold of one of Igor’s knives…

“ _Lethal little sod, isn’t he?”_ he dimly recalls Vimes asking as Captain Carrot had grabbed hold of him, gently beseeching him to let Igor give him some opium. Until that moment, he hadn’t recognised any of the Watchmen, had only—

He’d _panicked_.

Now, he is, as his mother would have said, _out of it_.

He’s struggling to focus on anything in the room for more than a few seconds, and there’s a distant ringing from the back of his head that won’t go away, and keeps throbbing from the inside of his head. Now and then, he sways in his bed, and he has been fighting nausea ever since he’d woken up from his poppy-induced stupor.

“You up to an interview?” Vimes asks as he steps into the cell. Drumknott puts on a squint, looking at Vimes blearily, and he grabs for the glasses on the stool next to his bedside. The clumsiness with which he puts them on is far from acted, and he almost drops them before he is able to look at Vimes through their plain glass.

“May I see his lordship?” Drumknott asks.

“He’s unconscious.”

“Nonetheless.”

“Answer my questions, and I’ll consider it,” Vimes says quietly, and he stands at the foot of Drumknott’s bed, his hands loosely in his pockets. Drumknott lets his head tip slightly back against the headboard as he feels himself swoon, and then he grunts in pain as his bandage brushes hard against the wood.

“I didn’t hurt anyone, did I?” Drumknott asks quietly.

“Not for lack of trying,” Vimes says. “Vetinari teach you to handle a knife like that? You nearly gave Nobby a new nostril.”

Shame bubbles in Drumknott’s belly, and he says, “My apologies. I didn’t know where I was. I believe the concussion left me somewhat disoriented.” Vimes looks at him very critically for a moment, and Drumknott wishes he could be back home, at the Palace, wishes he could just _lie down_ … “Is Wuffles next door with him?”

“Wuffles?” Vimes repeats, looking at him blankly.

“His lordship’s dog,” Drumknott says. “You didn’t leave him at the Palace, did you? He won’t like that.”

“Mr Drumknott,” Vimes says, and he puts his hand on the footboard of the metal bed, looking down at him. His expression is the most serious Drumknott has ever seen it, and he wishes he was at home. He just wants to go _home_. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t _know_ what happened,” Drumknott snaps, and the volume of his own voice makes him wince in pain, the room swimming as he shifts his head too quickly. “I don’t know what happened,” he says again. “I was coming up the stairs from the Clerks’ Offices, and I heard three people in the corridor—”

“How did you know it was three people?” Vimes asks.

Drumknott blinks, slowly. “I… don’t—” He oughtn’t tell him how. No one is supposed to realise how revealing the floorboards are outside of the Oblong Office, and other than Vetinari himself and Drumknott, he doesn’t believe anyone can measure the difference in people’s footsteps, measure… No. No, no, no. “Different footfalls,” Drumknott mumbles. He knows it’s a clumsy explanation, that it’s too obviously an attempt at deception, but he’s currently concentrating on not gagging. “But I had the paper from downstairs, and they must have… I thought they must have gone again, because I went back into the file room, which is at the back of my office, and I can’t hear the corridor from there. I just needed to put something down from the Clerks’ Office. And then I took Lord Vetinari’s paper to bring it into the Oblong Office.”

Drumknott frowns, thinking about the hazy memory, and he slowly shakes his head, even though it makes his head spin. “I… I knocked on the door. And it was. It was wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Vimes asks.

“I knocked on the door,” Drumknott says. “And Lord Vetinari opened it. But it wasn’t…” He trails off, trying to explain why it’s so _incorrect_ , why it doesn’t make _sense_. “And I stepped back, because it wasn’t him.”

Vimes stares at him for a long moment. “It wasn’t him?” he repeats, slowly.

“No,” Drumknott says. “I know that sounds… I know it sounds foolish, your excellency, but I was so certain, I… He _never_ opens the door. I open the door. He doesn’t open the door because it puts him too close, if there’s an intruder – he just lets it fall open, and the… And he was… He _smelled_ of wine.”

“Wine?”

“Yes, red wine. Cheap stuff, vinegary.” Remembering the smell makes the difference, and his hand whips to grab at the bowl on the bedside beside him, and he vomits. Not much comes up this time – he’d already emptied his stomach earlier, and now all he brings up is bile and a little water.

Vimes doesn’t flinch. He waits until Drumknott is done, and then asks, more gently than before, “He couldn’t have had a drink?”

“Lord Vetinari?” Drumknott asks, aware of how disbelieving he sounds. “No. His lordship is sensitive to strong smells, anyway. None of the staff are allowed to wear perfume or cologne, even – he wouldn’t be able to stomach wine that malodorous.”

“Did you have a weapon?” Vimes asks.

Drumknott hesitates. He doesn't trust his own concussed memory. “Was I… holding a weapon?” he asks.

Vimes gives him a very serious look.

“No,” Drumknott decides. “No, I don’t… I don’t carry a weapon inside the Palace.”

“You mean you carry one outside the Palace?” Vimes asks, quick as a whipcrack. Drumknott stares at him, his expression cultivatedly bland. He doesn’t let anything show in his face – or at least, he tries not to. “And then?”

“He kind of… He looked at me, but his face wasn’t— It wasn’t _right_ , Commander Vimes. It was too expressive. Even When Lord Vetinari _is_ drunk, he doesn’t wear what he’s feeling on his face like that. He kind of… looked at me, all confused, and I stepped back forward again, and he… He knew that I knew something— I saw him panic. And then it was just… Blackness. I remember… I remember the pain at the back of my head, and then something in my… Here. Someone hit my head, I think.”

“Lord Vetinari stabbed you,” Vimes says.

“No, he didn’t,” Drumknott replies reflexively. Vimes looks down at him.

“Mr Drumknott,” he says quietly. “He was standing over you, and he said, _I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him, I’m sorry.”_

Drumknott sniggers, and then gags. “Does that sound like the Patrician to you?” he asks sardonically. It is let down by the fact that he gags once more, and has to clap his hand over his mouth.  

“Can I see where he stabbed you?” Vimes asks.

“I…” He can’t think of a good reason to refuse, and so, setting the sick bowl aside, he reaches up with trembling hands to the buttons of the ill-fitting white pyjamas that Igor must have dressed him in, when he’d laid Drumknott’s clothes aside. He lets the pyjama shirt fall open, and he draws apart the shirt to show the bandage wrapped one half of his torso. He’d been stabbed through there on the left hand side, and the blade had dug right into the meat and muscle of his shoulder.

Vimes isn’t looking at the bandage. He’s looking, instead, at the rest of Drumknott’s chest, at his stomach. There are a great many scars on him, he is aware – a few burns on his stomach and his side, a few raised or rough marks of scar tissue where the skin had split and not healed correctly.”

He sees, in Vimes’ expression, rage. It is disguised, that much is true, by the neutral copper’s mask he wears, but there is a burning fire in his eyes, and Drumknott moves quickly to button the cheap cotton shirt back up.

“That from his lordship’s service?” Vimes asks, his voice hard.

“From my father.” Vimes’ rage cools slightly. It is still present – Vimes, rather like the Patrician, has a rather burning sense of justice, and this shows especially where children are the victims of one thing or another – but it relaxes somewhat. Drumknott draws the sheet up toward his body again. “Lord Vetinari wouldn’t stab me. Were I in need of execution, he would have someone else do it. And in the event he _did_ kill me, he wouldn’t release so torrid an outburst as that, and _apologise_ for it.”

Vimes inhales.

“Right,” he says. “Right.”

Vimes looks at him, and Drumknott thinks he reads sympathy in his face. He doesn’t care for it.

“May I see his lordship?” he asks again. “Please?” He must sound pathetic. He is aware of how desperate he sounds, but finds himself powerless to better his tone, to make himself sound more sensible… He’s twenty-four years old, he’s been in the Patrician’s service for _five years_ , and yet he just sounds like he’s _whining_.

Vimes sighs, but he goes to the door, opening it and calling in Igor. He’s very reluctant to let Drumknott get up, but he allows it, and Drumknott stands on slow, uncertain feet. His legs are weak, and he has to lean heavily on Vimes to walk out into the corridor, and stand to look at Vetinari through the door.

He looks so pale.

Drumknott watches him lying on the bed, and his hand goes for the cell door, but Vimes mutters a “No,” and brings him reluctantly back to his own cell.

It is only an hour or so later, when Drumknott is carefully drinking a very thin soup that William de Worde, of the Ankh-Morpork Times, enters his cell. He is more collected, now, more aware of what exactly is happening, less dizzy…

He doesn’t tell de Worde that much. He tries to tell him what the Patrician would tell him, tries to… He hates having to anticipate Lord Vetinari, when Lord Vetinari is lying unconscious. He hates it. He hates being kept _separate_ from him when he is still lying prone on the next bed…

When Igor is called upstairs, Drumknott stands on very shaky legs, and he draws a few paperclips from the front pocket of his suit, which is over the chair in the corner, and advances on the lock.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Is Vetinari awake yet?” Vimes asks as Igor enters the office for his report, and Igor slowly shakes his head.

“No, he ith still unconscious. And Mr Drumknott is, uh, still asking to see him.”

“Yeah,” Vimes murmurs. “He’ll do that.” He thinks of Drumknott lying back on the bed, and saying so firmly, with so much faith, _No, he didn’t_. He’s never seen a young man with such faith in another human being, and his _reasoning_ , it’s—

Not, “he wouldn’t stab me, he wouldn’t do that,” but an explanation that is so much colder, and so much more _in-character_ for the Patrician himself: if he did kill me, he wouldn’t apologise, and if he wanted me dead, he’d have someone else do it. It’s a horrible way for a man that young to think, to hold himself – he’s the same age as Carrot, for gods’ sake, and that…

Vimes had been that loyal, when he’d been a young man. It’s dangerous, that sort of loyalty, and Drumknott has already proved he’s dangerous when he’d been brought in. Vimes is certain he mustn’t have been that much of a terror when he first joined the Patrician’s service four or so years back, after Wonse died, _knows_ …

And now, look at him.

But he’d seemed so confident that it _wasn’t_ Vetinari, and now, this business with the missing dog… There are things missing here, Vimes knows, vital things that are missing, but— Perhaps Drumknott is right.

Perhaps it hadn’t really been Vetinari: perhaps he’d seen a wizard in a disguise, or a mask, or something…

No.

No, that sounds too unlikely.

“I’ll walk back down with you,” Vimes says quietly, and he follows Igor down the stairs, past the two guards on the door… And hesitates. Drumknott’s cell door is just slightly ajar, but neither of the lads on guard have moved at all.

He moves swiftly, and he pushes open Vetinari’s cell door.

On the ground beside Vetinari’s bed, leaning up against the wall, Drumknott breathes raggedly, visibly exerted by the effort of stumbling from one door to the other. In his bed, Vetinari is still lying very still, looking the most peaceful Vimes has ever seen him.

“Mr Drumknott,” Igor protests, but Vimes can see the hardened look in the young man’s eyes, the way he locks gazes with Vimes and just _stares_.

“Let’s get his mattress,” he decides. “There’s no point in him lying on the floor like that.”

Igor hesitates. “Mr Vimes,” he says slowly. “It ith… _unorthodox_ , isn’t it, to put a man in the same room with his attacker?”

“Mr Drumknott,” Vimes says, and Drumknott looks at him through his spectacles, panting. He looks as if he’s going to fall over any moment. “If we put you back in your own cell, are you going to keep breaking out?”

Drumknott stares at him, his gaze far too icy to belong to a man his age – he might have been good at glaring before he joined the Patrician’s service, as any clerk is[1], but his time with the Patrician has lent a cold brutality to it.

“Get the mattress,” Vimes repeats, and he and Igor take a step back, into the other cell.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Vimes stands in the doorway of Vetinari’s cell. Vetinari is sitting up in the bed, and is cupping a mug of steaming tea between his pale, veined palms, and his gaze flits toward Vimes as he enters.

“Commander Vimes,” Vetinari says, slowly. “Is there a reason that my secretary is sleeping on the floor beside my bed?”

Vimes follows Vetinari’s gaze to Drumknott, who is lying on his side on the mattress, underneath a blanket. Ever since they brought the mattress in here, he’s been sleeping peacefully beside Lord Vetinari, fidgeting less, complaining less, and making no more attempts to escape his cell.

“It was the path of least resistance,” Vimes answers.

“He can be a very stubborn young man,” Vetinari murmurs, and Vimes doesn’t think he imagines the flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Loyal to a fault, that one. And they call _me_ your dog.”

Nothing changes in Vetinari’s face, but he lowers his mug slightly away from his mouth. “Where _is_ my dog?” he asks, apparently choosing to ignore Vimes’ sarcastic comment. Vimes sighs, and he takes a step further into the cell to explain.

Drumknott doesn’t stir the whole time, and Vimes is helpless but to wonder how much either of them has _actually_ been sleeping in Pseudopolis Yard – are the two of them just that good at faking it?

It wouldn’t surprise him.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott leans on Vetinari’s cane as they slowly ascend the stairs of the Patrician’s Palace. “You will be taking bedrest,” Vetinari says sternly as they slowly move up. Wuffles rushes ahead of them on the stair, but he keeps out from beneath their feet.

“Yes, my lord,” Drumknott agrees. “But I—”

“ _Hush_.”

They make their way not, as Drumknott had expected, toward the quarters, but toward the Oblong Office, and Drumknott, _desperate_ to work after the past few days trapped in the cellar of Pseudopolis Yard, does not want to risk complaining.

They move into the office, where blood stains the floor, and Drumknott feels a twinge of guilt, but—

He stares at the chaise long to the edge of the room, where Vetinari will sometimes lay down when having one of his headaches. A few pillows have been set against the arm, and blankets are piled ready. Relief bursts in his chest, and he exhales, gripping tightly at the Death’s Head of Lord Vetinari’s cane.

Drumknott slowly pushes the door closed, and as soon as it clicks shut, he lets himself drop forward, burying his face against the Patrician’s shoulder.

He doesn’t sob, or let out some noise of complaint. This is not in his nature: it is not in Lord Vetinari’s.

“I can sleep here?” he asks, desperately.

There is a moment’s pause. “I don’t want you out of my sight,” Vetinari replies quietly, in an unusually stiff, tense tone, and he raises his shoulder, curling an arm around Drumknott. He doesn’t do this, usually – he doesn’t _hold_ Drumknott. Their touches are short, fleeting, and subtle in their nature – they sit side-by-side on the piano stool, or they walk shoulder-to-shoulder in the gardens. Sometimes, their fingers brush against one another.

This is different, and Drumknott wishes he never had to come away from the hard press of Lord Vetinari’s chest, unyielding where he leans against it. Vetinari’s fingers gently curl around his shoulder, and touch the back of his neck: Drumknott exhales as he feels Vetinari’s fingers brush against the top of his head, feels like he could _swoon_.

“I’m sorry,” Drumknott mutters. Silence rings out in the room between them, and he is aware only of the sound of his own breathing, heavy and ragged with the effort of coming up the stairs.

“Go lie down,” Vetinari says quietly, and Drumknott comes away from the Patrician reluctantly, lying slowly down on the chaise long. He drops his glasses aside. “Wuffles,” Vetinari says, and the dog rushes forward, hopping up onto the chaise long beside Drumknott and curling up against his thighs.

“Will you let me work?” Drumknott asks. “If I stay—”

“ _Go to sleep_ ,” Vetinari orders, his voice crisp and sharp, and Drumknott curls an awkward arm around Wuffles, grateful for the fact that the dog’s mouth is closed, and that he can’t smell the terrible stench of his bad teeth.

“Is that a yes?”

“Drumknott—”

“I’m sleeping, my lord, I’m sleeping!” He closes his eyes to make the lie more convincing. He hears Vetinari exhale, and then let out a low, singular chuckle: it sounds relieved, and Drumknott feels his chest _ache_ in a way that has nothing to do with his new chest wound, his fingers dragging absently over Wuffles’ wiry fur. “I’m very grateful, my lord. To be in your service. I hope you aren’t considering something… _Silly_. Like, for example, putting me in a different department.”

“Did I not just say, Drumknott,” Vetinari asks quietly, his voice still full of tension, “that I did not want you to leave my sight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how well might I be able to keep you within my sight, I wonder, were I to place you elsewhere?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, my lord.”

Again, a huff of almost-laughter, but still he hears the stiffness, the lingering _worry_ , and he feels so much shame, so much guilt— “Go to sleep, Drumknott. If you do not of your own accord, I will have Mr Lockheed bring some soporific, and you know how keen he is to drug the other Palace staff, when opportunity arises.”

Drumknott presses his face against the pillow, ignoring the way his head throbs slightly at the shift of his position. He wishes he could say something. He wishes he could say something comforting, something that might make Lord Vetinari _relax_ , but nothing comes to mind.

He wants to say something… _loving_. He wants to say, “I knew it wasn’t you,” but Vetinari knows that; he wants to say, “I feel safe with you,” but Vetinari knows that too; he wishes he could say, “ _I love you,_ ” but that would be… That would be wrong. He couldn’t do that.

“Lord Vetinari?”

“Drumknott, I am reaching for the switch, and I will call Lockheed—”

“I am very grateful, my lord, to be in your service,” he repeats. “There isn’t anywhere on the Disc I’d prefer to be.” Silence reigns in the room, and when two warm fingers brush his fringe back from his face, the touch very delicate, he doesn’t open his eyes. He lets himself drift into a slow doze, and relaxes to the regular rhythm of Lord Vetinari’s quill scratching against paper.

 

[1] Clerks, librarians, and secretaries each have a preternatural ability for glaring, shushing, and silently scolding.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open.
> 
> I run a [Discworld Comm](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/), and there's also [a Discord right here.](https://discord.gg/b8Z3ThH)


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